Director, Systems Engineering

General Summary: 

The Director of Systems Engineering is a hands-on technical leader responsible for the architecture, engineering, reliability, security, and operation of the University’s enterprise systems infrastructure.

The Director leads and develops the Systems Engineering team while also serving as a senior technical contributor. The position participates directly in infrastructure design, complex implementations, automation, troubleshooting, incident response, major upgrades, and disaster recovery.

The Systems Engineering portfolio includes on-premises and cloud infrastructure, Windows and Linux systems, virtualization, storage, backup and recovery, directory and authentication services, monitoring, automation, and related enterprise platforms.

The Director collaborates with Information Security, Network Engineering, Enterprise Applications, Research Computing, Client Services, Academic Technology, and departmental technology teams to provide secure, resilient, scalable, and supportable services for the University’s academic, research, and administrative missions.

Examples of Duties: 

Essential Duties and Responsibilities

1. Team leadership

• Lead, supervise, mentor, and develop the Systems Engineering team by establishing clear responsibilities, service ownership, performance expectations, technical documentation, professional development opportunities, and service outcomes while reducing dependency on individual employees through cross-training and knowledge sharing.

• Develop and maintain a multiyear roadmap for systems infrastructure, hybrid cloud, platform modernization, automation, resilience, and lifecycle replacement.

• Establish technical standards and architecture that promote security, reliability, scalability, interoperability, maintainability, accessibility, and cost effectiveness.

• Communicate infrastructure strategy, service performance, operational risks, incidents, and investment needs to technical and nontechnical audiences.

• Manage infrastructure budgets, contracts, licensing, cloud consumption, lifecycle planning, procurement, and vendor performance.

2. Operations and Engineering

• Oversee the reliable operation of enterprise infrastructure services by establishing measures for availability, performance, capacity, patching, vulnerability remediation, backup, and recovery readiness, while maintaining a comprehensive backup, restoration, and disaster-recovery program with documented recovery requirements and regular testing of critical services.

• Serve as a hands-on senior technical contributor and escalation resource for complex enterprise infrastructure and systems reliability issues, including major incident response, service restoration, technical troubleshooting, post-incident reviews, and corrective action planning.

• Lead and participate directly in major infrastructure implementations, upgrades, migrations, recovery activities, and cross-functional technology initiatives while advancing the use of infrastructure as code, configuration management, scripting, version control, automated deployment, monitoring, and other repeatable engineering practices.

3. Collaboration and Culture

• Partner with Information Security to implement system hardening, privileged-access controls, vulnerability remediation, logging, auditability, and compliance requirements

• Partner with Research Computing and academic units to provide infrastructure that supports research growth, specialized computing needs, regulated data, and cloud-based research environments.

• Promote an inclusive, collaborative, and service-oriented environment in which employees are supported, accountable, and encouraged to develop their technical and leadership capabilities.

4. Perform other duties and responsibilities as assigned.

Decision-Making Authority

The Director establishes technical and operational standards for enterprise systems infrastructure within University policies, security requirements, governance processes, and approved budgets.

The Director assigns Systems Engineering resources, approves routine technical approaches and infrastructure changes, leads technical decision-making during major incidents, and may require remediation of conditions that present significant security, reliability, continuity, or support risks.

The Director recommends technology investments, platform changes, staffing needs, vendor actions, workload placement, lifecycle priorities, and risk treatment to Information Technology leadership.

Minimum Qualifications: 

1. Bachelor’s degree in information technology, computer science, engineering, or a related field.2. At least ten years of progressively responsible experience designing, implementing, and operating complex enterprise infrastructure environments.
3. At least five years of experience leading technical staff, teams, projects, or major infrastructure functions. Formal supervisory experience is strongly preferred.
4. Demonstrated ability to serve as both a people leader and a hands-on senior technical contributor.
5. Strong knowledge of enterprise infrastructure technologies and practices, including several of the following:
a. Windows or Linux systems

b. Cloud infrastructure

c. Virtualization

d. Enterprise identity and authentication

e. Storage, backup, and disaster recovery

f. Infrastructure automation or scripting

g. Systems monitoring and observability

h. Infrastructure security and vulnerability management

i. Experience leading complex technical implementations, upgrades, migrations, or production incident response.

j. Demonstrated ability to establish priorities, make sound technical decisions, delegate effectively, develop staff, and maintain accountability.

k. Strong communication, collaboration, customer-service, and documentation skills.

l. Demonstrated ability to work effectively with individuals from diverse backgrounds, experiences, identities, disciplines, and organizational levels.

Preferred Qualifications

1. Experience supporting technology in higher education, research, government, healthcare, or another complex institutional environment.

2. Experience with Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Active Directory, Entra ID, VMware or comparable virtualization platforms, enterprise backup technologies, and Linux systems.

3. Experience with infrastructure automation and configuration-management technologies such as PowerShell, Python, Ansible, Git, or comparable tools.

4. Experience supporting research computing, regulated data, cloud-based research environments, or data-intensive academic work.

5. Experience with service-management, site-reliability, or disaster-recovery practices.

6. Relevant technical, cloud, security, service-management, project-management, or leadership certifications.

Work Schedule and Conditions

The position requires participation in planned maintenance, major upgrades, incident response, and recovery activities that may occur outside normal University business hours.
Because of the position’s leadership, team-development, operational, and hands-on technical responsibilities, the Director is generally expected to work on campus at least four days per week. Limited remote work may be available consistent with University policy and operational needs.
The Director must also be available to respond to significant incidents, emergencies, and critical system activities that require an on-campus presence outside the regular work schedule.

Our Approach to Candidates

UMass Boston recognizes that strong candidates may gain relevant skills through a variety of professional, educational, and lived experiences. Candidates who meet many, but not necessarily all, of the preferred qualifications are encouraged to apply. We welcome applicants with transferable experience, nontraditional career paths, and a demonstrated commitment to collaborative and inclusive leadership.

For Professional Unit Positions:
• Is this job required to be on-call? Yes

Background Check Information:
In addition to the mandatory standard background check package, please select additional products from the a la carte menu below.

UMass Boston Standard Background Package (Mandatory)

• Criminal Felony & Misdemeanor - 7 years (a) - Unlimited # of counties as revealed by SSN Trace
• Federal Criminal
• Massachusetts CORI
• Education Report - highest degree (b)
• Employment Report - 7 years, previous employer
• National Sex Offender Search
• Professional Licenses Report - per license
• SSN Trace
• SSN Validation

Supervision Received:
The Director of Systems Engineering works under the direction of the Associate CIO for Enterprise Platforms and Operations and exercises substantial independent judgment in technical, operational, staffing, and service-management matters.

Supervision Exercised:
The Director directly supervises Systems Engineering staff and may provide technical or project leadership to consultants, contractors, student employees, and employees participating in cross-functional initiatives.

Application Instructions: 

Please apply online with your resume, cover letter and list of three professional references.

Review of candidates will begin following the application closing date. 

Only Internal candidates in the Professional Staff Bargaining Unit will be considered during the first 10 business days of the posting. All other candidates will be considered after that period. 

Salary Ranges for the appropriate Pay Grade can be found at the following link: 

Grade: 36

This is an exempt union position. 

All official salary offers must be approved by Human Resources.

UMass Boston is committed to the full inclusion of all qualified individuals. As part of this commitment, we will ensure that persons with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations for the hiring process. If reasonable accommodation is needed, please contact View email address on us.fitly.work View phone number on us.fitly.work.